There are two populations of bull trout – north fork Skokomish River/Cushman (resident and adfluvial – ocean going); and south fork Skokomish River (resident, fluvial, anadromous)

Monitoring taking place:

South Fork includes redd counts from river mile 0 to RM 10 by Church Creek

North Fork includes looking at peak live adult counts, via snorkel surveys upstream of Lake Cushman.

South Fork redd index data – up until 2014, seen variation of numbers of redds, between 2000-2013. Low and variable is the take home message of the overall population.

North Fork live adults counts – 1995 – 2013 – again varied, fairly constant though, more than 100 per year for the most part.

When doing surveys for steelhead, found bull trout, some at 17-22 inches, some as large as 27 inches. See more and more bull trout show up when steelhead arrive. Presumably, BT are feeding on steelhead eggs.

Summary:

Populations in Skokomish still remain small

Fragmentation is still problematic but fish passage in the north fork provides future options.

Recent increases in steelhead are likely to positively influence survival of all life stages.

Chinook:

Historic spring populations in the upper SF, NF; Fall populations were in the mainstream, lower SF and NF.

In the 40s, 50s, 60s – that’s when we seemed to have lost genetic population. Not sure what it was, but developed a genetically foreign population in the Skokomish. Late run no longer is detectable. Spring chinook is rare.

Had increasing trend though 2013, then steep decline in 2014. But seeing fairly continuous increase of 200-300 that are natural origin.

George Adams Hatchery program:

Release 3.8 million juvenile chinook from the hatchery each year since 2003.

again, look at age, sex, mark rates.

Spawning and Arrival timing trends – downward trend in peak arrival and spawning since 1994. This isn’t entirely explained by genetics, we think. We tend to surplus the early fish that come back. Yet they come earlier and earlier each year.

In general, overall efforts to recover Skokomish River chinook:

Habitat restoration

Forest Practices

Cushman re-licensing

Spring Chinook reintroduction

Develop and evaluate a late timed GA hatchery stock

Fisheries directed on hatchery production

Matt Kowlaski, Skokomish Tribe, Salmon/Steelhead biologist: Steelhead

2007 – Steelhead listed on the ESA list,

2006-07 NOAA started leading the steelhead supplementation project, increased the amount of monitoring in the watershed.

What we’re finding out:

Monitoring Activities: Redd surveys – primary way to get escapement estimates into the system.

This year, we had a few fish kills this summer, plus a dead zone in lower Hood Canal, near Lynch Cove. Finding zero dissolved oxygen in this area. We’ve seen this before, in 2007, where there is nothing able to live in that area for a period of time. Our fish kills haven’t been as big as in the past but it’s a big concern for us.

Shellfish bed harvest closures because of water quality issues.

Skokomish is legendary for flooding in the fall. But the past few years have not had floods reach the tribal center, so that’s a good thing.

Water quality assessments – look at more than 21 freshwater sites and assess, plus 9 well sites. Expanded lab to include organics analysis, as well as nutrients analysis as before.

The program has been monitoring water quality since 1995. Main constituents are water quality parameters. We work under EPA guidelines.

Surface monitoring locations include at gages on South Fork and North Fork of the Skokomish River, at the tribe’s hatchery on Enitai Creek, as well as out in the estuary.

There is a potential model with USGS PUD1 MCD, Skok and Squaxin island tribes and stakeholders to figure out how much water there is in these aquifers so we can better understand how much water we have in the future and how it would impact groundwater and the local hatchery operations.

Work funded by EPA grants: General Assistance Program, the 106 Clean Water Act and the 319 non point source pollution.

Concerns:

Bacteria dominated because of shellfish impacts. Fecal coliform and ecoli are causing closures. Nutrients can be an issue. We had large macro algae blooms in estuary; sea lettuce species that grew in big thick mats smothered shellfish beds. Plus the dead zones.

Flooding – the septic systems aren’t working and so when flooding, don’t touch the water.

We are doing additional studies, but we need to pinpoint the places to correct them. Cattle, septic, recreational, all the different impacts – we have to keep up on. it shows we need to continue to work together.

Florian Lesichner, Tacoma Power: Skok River Channel Monitoring

Skok valley is most frequently flooded valley in West Washington.

Why does it flood? When water exceeds bank channel, and out of flood plain, that’s when flooding happens.

Rivers should only flood about 1-1.5 years. For the Skok, it needs to be at 14,000 cfs to flood.

Army Corps of Engineers is studying the history of the river’s flooding, figuring out what could have contributed to this increase over the decades.

Part of new dam re-licensing agreement for Lake Cushman – large pulses of water are released to help push sediment down river, as dams have prevented natural flow of sediment in river system. Monitoring 11 sites for this effort.

North Fork – so far – not much happening. very stable.

South Fork – very dynamic.

Mainstem – has been somewhat stable.

Flows above about 4,000 CFS starts to flood landowners in the valley.

Flood damage reduction and mitigation plan is due early 2017.

Rich Geiger – Mason County Conservation District: What projects are ongoing and what projects are slated for the near future

In 1930s, state and county started working on flooding projects in the area. Historically the focus has been on flooding and restoration, but they were seen as band-aid projects – the problem was not being corrected.

In 2003 – there was a dike breach and channel change in a single flood event. At this point, Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) was brought in to (re) start the General Investigation process.

Recon Phase was from 1999-2000

Feasiblity Phase 2006-2015 – wrapping up now.

ACOE is now recommending to Congress several projects to take place, including setting back a levy and reconnect an old channel that was the mainstem one time.

Army Corps – not doing all the projects needed, as there has been a lot of local agencies doing work already. Floodplain reconnecting, new channel creation, channel and riparian restoration, etc.

Recommended plan features: engineered logjams (creating better habitat for salmon and help with sediment transport issues in this year); removal of levee at confluence of mainstream and north fork; work with landowners to move back an existing levee (will expand flood plain, lower flood levels, create side channels); wetland restoration at the valley’s Grange property (creating side channel)

There is so much sediment in the river channel that water actually goes underground during fish migration season.

Local restoration projects:

Ongoing:

Skokomish Estuary restoration –

2007 – removed a mile of dike west of Nalley Island, built elevated boardwalk

phase 2 – removed more dikes around Nalley Island

phase 3 – cut more channels, replacing undersized culverts with bridges on Tacoma Access and Skok Flats roads, reconnecting the tidal channels from estuary to the fresh water sources

South Fork LWD – Holman Flats

2015 – harvesting wood to stockpile at Holman Flats (was a potential dam site in the 1950s for Tacoma but abandoned because of earthquake fault)

in 2010, completed a LWD phase in SF. Natural, no anchoring, no cable connection, just interlinked.

Results – all structures have remained in tact and gathered additional wood. Helped with channel reformation.

These dams are 90 years old and this is the first time there is opportunity for fish passage since they were constructed.

Fish passage work at Little Falls this year – located in between the two dams, very steep grade for fish, with high velocity water flow, made it hard for fish to get up stream.

Needed to do it with minimal impacts to the area, since it’s also culturally viable area to the tribe.

Since the amendments to Little Falls, more fish have been headed upstream of Little Falls. Coho have been showing up in good numbers, right up to the fish trap at Cushman 1. We’ve also seen a few steelhead come up the river so it’s promising to know they can get upstream.

It’ll take the next year to find out fully how Little Falls improves fish passage.

Florian Leischner, Tacoma Power:

We’re not fish managers but the work we do sometimes comes close to fish management.

History of Lake Cushman includes more than 100 years of resident fish stockings. In 1899, Lake Cushman had 2,500 brook trout.

At the same time at Lake Kokanee – from 2001-present, the state first, now Tacoma, put in several thousand rainbow trout (4,000-9,000) for a put-and-take fishery.

Surveys of the Lake Cushman in 2012 show that bull trout were the biggest but the population was Salish suckers. Same for 2013. Few bull trout but ginormous fish.

So what is the recreational fishery targeting? Just a few species: Kokanee, cutthroat, bull trout but then occasionally get a resident chinook.

When Sockeye come back, and then have Kokanee in the lake, it’s going to be a challenge to determine what to pass, what not to pass. Nightmare for the co-managers too (tribes and state) to keep the Kokanee fishery alive.

Future monitoring:

New lake Kokanee creel survey will be in 2019, plus fish passage and upper North Fork Skokomish basin disposition monitoring will take place. It’d be great to get 100,000 Sockeye in the lake.

How TPU is managing reservoirs and what has been done in the past year.

Goals of managing the reservoirs:

Downstream ecology of the North Fork of the Skokomish River

Recreation – summer operation elevation

Use of available storage to reduce peak down stream flows

Power production

We’re continuously monitoring discharge, in-flows, generator status of the reservoirs at Cushman and Kokanee. We’re always keeping an eye on weather and climate predictions. We have to be ready for the full potential of weather scenarios.

With this year’s drought, we worked proactively to manage the anticipated weather patterns.

There was a lot of rain and not so much snow this past winter, and we did in fact have record low in flows. Mid-April, we stopped running Cushman 2 dam, and only released minimum flows.

Tacoma worked with the FHC to modify the minimum flow regime in response to the 2015 drought conditions.

Upstream passage has been in operation since last year, bringing fish up from the bottom of the Lake Kokanee dam and move them up river. Downstream passage is functional too. We collect juvenile fish from Cushman (hatchery or wild) and bring them below the dams to release them.

We also do hatchery supplementation, and will work with chinook, steelhead, coho and sockeye to raise them in the Cushman facilities.

Restoration work in the river included modifications of Little Falls, which included carving out resting pools and passages for the fish. It was so steep, fish had a hard time getting up it.

Fish passage up Little Falls happened immediately after the work was done last fall. It’s functioning like we’d hope it would.

Sorting Facility at the top of the Kokanee dam: adult fish are sorted and transported to either the river, upstream in Cushman, into a hatchery for the broodstock, or removed from watershed b/c they are an invasive species – all part of partnership work with area groups to determine where these fish need to go to meet everyone’s needs.

In the fish collector – found chinook, bass, a frog, crayfish, and wild fish! It’s been interesting to see what we been collecting in that facility.

Reintroduction/supplementation:

Sockeye will be raised at Saltwater Park Hatchery (under construction)

Chinook, steelhead and coho will be raised at North Fork Skokomish Salmon Hatchery (under construction)

North Fork hatchery is currently being constructed on Lake Cushman.

Saltwater Park Hatchery is currently being constructed on Hood Canal & Highway 101.

We work with all these different agencies, political and technical folks to accomplish our goals of restoring, recovering and maintaining our resources.

There’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of information out there. I think this a sharing experiencing, what information is available and using that information.

I know we’re seeing results, in our estuary, our upper watershed, we’re able to measure those results – for fish, for wildlife and aquatic habitats.

The Skokomish People are successors to the historic people who occupied 13 village sites throughout Hood Canal. This is our homeland and this is the lifeblood of our people right now – to be able to have those resources, fish, wildlife, plant, medicines to sustain our mind body spirit culture and economy.

Keith Underwood – Tacoma Power

Tacoma wasn’t always a great environmental partner in the past. It’s nice to be able to finally be able to partner with the tribe after 70 plus years of fighting, now working in the same room together, side-by-side.

Tacoma has gone through a lot of growth the past few years. We’re a new partner to you folks as a lot of you have been working together for years before we came on the scene.

My first meeting with the tribe was with Dave Herrera at the Skokomish Tribe. I’m a very large supporter of this tribe. I was a fish biologist for the Spokane Tribe. I was working with a bunch of disassociated groups for a project to clean up Lake Roosevelt and with a united front we were able to obtain funding and confront a company in Canada that was sending pollutants in to a lake. So now they’re upholding this company to maintain Superfund regulations.

Here in the Skokomish, we’ve had limited flows coming out for years, we have sediment issues, and now have a great deal of work and different view points to find the solutions to these problems.

It’s not just me though – the science guys and gals – it’s going to take public buy into get this work done. This is in a smaller context in this watershed compared to Spokane but the work is the same.

Skokomish’s Habitat Program includes monitoring vegetation, eelgrass, invertebrates, shellfish surveys, and water chemistry.

Vegetation monitoring is a big part of what I do – photo points show from 2008-2014 starting with mud flats and has come back with plush vegetation. We’re also seeing soil changing and higher salinity rates in soil.

Eelgrass is the new buzzword – a lot of agencies doing eelgrass studies. USGS used single beam sonar to map the eelgrass in the seafloor and we’re seeing increases in some areas and decreases in some areas. DNR has been doing similar work for more than a decade and has seen eelgrass patches double in size.

Sediment delivery and accretion is another measurement we do – we have sediment pins throughout the estuary and every year we measure how much sediment we’re getting through those areas and after every major flood. Shortly after restoration we had sediment coming through and the areas is now starting to become better habitat for shellfish.

Bugs! We collect bugs in the estuary and lavage salmon stomachs to see what they’re eating. Control sites see much more abundant variety of insects. other sites, no insects at all.

We’re using water data loggers, looking at connectivity, temperature and water level.

USGS contracted by the tribe to do bathymetry of the seafloor. Hope to get more information by doing dives with cameras.

Shellfish survey – shellfish techs -doing a lot of work with their surveys. Seeing mussels coming in the last few years and football fields of grass.

Matt Kowalski – fish use monitoring

2012 was first full year of sampling.

The first big obstacles was having a limited amount of “before” sampling. There had been some hobby sampling but there was very little access for fish behind the old dikes.

We started with our first phase, calling it the Initial Response phase – right after things opened up with the dike removal, this phase is conducting four years of sampling – fish can get into the channels and channels were still forming. This will be considered our baseline.

Currently in third year and will be wrapping up the initial response phase and have the first four years of data.

After that, I’d like to keep it rolling for another four years, call it the Developing Response phase. see if more fish as the area has developed.

Sampling methods – large channels and small channels sampling

large channels uses a boat, greater than 10 M area and use 100′ beach seine, 10 sets, all in one day, four days a month, back-to-back days

small channel – want to know if fish are getting way up there in the small channels. less than 10M area, use 50′ seine, span channel with seine, block off end with another seine and catch fish that way

Only can do small channel in restoration areas, not control. 1 day a month – 8 small channels sites

What are we looking for?

Species richness – are we seeing more in control or restoration? we’re seeing more in control areas.

Qualitatively – which species are we seeing in which areas? mostly just have salmon everywhere.

Distribution – the number of salmon present in each site. Have seen chum at all sites, so we know salmon can access all our sites. Goal is is to see each species in each site.

Residence time – number of months species is present in catch sample

Fish size/growth – taking fork length of the first 20 from each set

What’s working?

We’re getting out there and catching fish and getting data. We’re seeing some patterns emerge in control vs. restoration. A pleasant surprise is that the distribution is doing well. We’re finding chum everywhere so they can get to our samples ties, so hopefully they’ll get to all of them.

During a flood event our site with the watergate info can get a million hits in one day. We’ve been improving transmitters to provide more data sooner, and reliability and accuracy has improved a lot the past few years.

Clicking on the site shows the discharge cubic feet, means, where we are, also you can get trends from previous years, plot other rivers against this one. Web site has a lot of good information on it.

It’s being able to answer questions about the amount of habitat restoration that’s happening on the ground. We’re answering in terms of acres treated, miles treated, how many inseam structures have been installed … these are called reporting metrics.

We wanted to pick a subset of metrics to track the question of what’s being done on the ground and talk about that in a way that’s meaningful but simple.

Now we’ve got this list of metrics – where do we track these now? We could use PRISM – which tracks projects but the problem is that database only tracks projects from certain funding sources.

We developed a habitat work schedule but then needed to figure out which metrics to track with it. Solution: – develop a geo-database. Uses geo (spatial) with database to create a central data repository for storage and management. This is the container we want to put all measurement metrics into.

Now going back and inputting the data from projects back to the 1990s, with these certain metrics, into this database.

Problem – a lot of information is also in people’s back rooms, shelves, file cabinets, broken laptops, heads, etc.

We wanted to compile and report in a numeric fashion but also create maps of data. He presented a map showing every project that’s been done within the Skokomish basin, including acreage of estuary work and instream work.

Also adding aerial photos, data from ArcGIS, ArcPad – has GPS in it to show where work happened on the ground –

We have the metrics quantified, also uploaded all the project photos to a cloud-based server connected with a hyperlink so folks could see photos associated with project.

Metric Totals include total acres of estuary treated, total miles of dike removal, total acres of riparian planted, miles of riparian treated, total miles of instream, number of structures placed.

Mark Downen: When and where WDFW is conducting monitoring in Skok Basin

Our principle activities are stock assessment – so we’re out there a lot.

WDFW is responsible for stock assessment in the context of fisheries management. And also as a result of Boldt decision, we’re co-managers.

Our current role in monitoring:

coordination with tribe, stock assessment, data management, age compositions, development of escapement estimates, assessing contribution of wild and hatchery on the spawning grounds

we’re involved at some level with all major stocks – chinook, coho, summer and upper skok fall chum, pinks and winter steelhead.

Mostly – tribe covers north folk and upper south fork and we cover lower SF and hunter slough.

Adult spawner surveys – we’ve contracted with the tribe to do lower and upper watershed surveys

Habitat is being assessed just below Cushman Dam 2 and we’re also assessing McTaggert Creek – the largest tributary below the dams.

These are the preliminary results from 2.5 years of study:

Sediment doesn’t move easily.
Lower North Fork habitat is in good conditions but the tributaries are OK, where wood and pools are concerned (not as much with water flow).

We’ve observed Chum, Coho, Chinoook, Pink, Steelhead, in the order of abundance.

Seeing high egg-to-fry survival: The smolt trap last year showed us that chum in particular have a very good survival since they’re only affected by scour in fresh water. We caught 30K chum fry every day at the smolt for a six week period.

Barry: Hood Canal Steelhead Project

This is really the only experiment of its kind of testing hatchery fish in natural populations, called a replicated-during-after-control-impact-experiment.

Started in 2006, teams started collecting embryos and now done with that. And South Fork Skokomish is part of this project.

I’ll just answer your questions already:

What do we do: Monitor genetics, abundance, life history diversity. We need to determine effects of hatchery programs on natural populations and understanding limiting factors on steelhead productivity.

Fish passage goals are to collect broodstock, plant juveniles and support fish with transportation

Objective: We’re assessing the effectiveness of the collector/transport fish system.

Basically, we’ll be looking at system survival, fish capture efficiency, and is it safe, timely and effective, as well as the biological, physical and environmental aspects of the fish.

We will start using a floating surface collector that will be operational in Spring 2015 when we’ll start assessing and releasing the test fish. Release thousands of fish with PIT tags (microchips) at the head of the lake. Some will have acoustic tags and released as well. Will be looking at how the fish come back and collect in the fish collector and the elements involved there (hydrology, physical, environmental elements, how fish are affected by all this)

Upstream Passage – collector is located at the base of Dam. 2, where fish are collected, then taken to a fish sorter and will determined where they go.

At Little Falls: Three years ago, there was a salmon that was trying to jump up a vertical stream but couldn’t make it because it was so steep. So a system has been put in place to take out some rock to help with the vertical reach and create pools for upstream migrating salmon. Basically, installing a bypass for the fish around steep falls.

Mark Downen: Bulltrout and habitat assessment of North Fork

Since 1926, Cushman Reservoir has harbored an isolated fish community. With the new dam license, new salmon will be introduced to the watershed.

With the low productivity and limited spawning habitat and ongoing potential of illegal introduction of nonnative species, an updated fish community baseline was needed to inform sound fish management and recovery decisions.

Methods – horizontal and vertical gill nets, fyke nets and electrofishing sites. Analysis included looking at fish species composition, life history characteristics, and habitat use prior to introduction of salmonids.

in 2013-large mouth bass showed up… heard about it in the lakes but never saw until now. also keeping an eye out for small mouth bass, which area a much colder species, so that could be of concern if they show up.

Only have a 15-17% mortality using the gill nets – would set for 30 minutes and then pull. Found bull trout mostly in the morning. Were able to sample and release them live.

Observations –
abundant forage base in the lake, in numbers and compositions and size classes – providing lots of diversity in the low level of the food web

There is an absence of chinook in intensively monitored habitats; an absence of juvenile bull trout in the lake and largemouth bass distribution abundance and growth.

Summary – we believed we developed a sound logistical framework for sampling fish species in the lake and could be valuable as we move forward to in sampling fish, to develop a database to compare to.

Marc: Our work has included forest thinning, prioritizing fish blocking culverts… looking at resident reaches of the watershed. 90 percent of the reaches have a team of two that are going across the forest, primarily Skokomish.

Basically the fish species we’re running into are rainbow trout, sculpin and in a few streams, coho.

Challenges include conducting survey in low flow conditions. And we’re not just looking for last fish but last habitat – looking at more gradient barriers, size of stream, those of types of changes within the channel.

This is kind of a work in progress. We’re always trying to sharpen our understanding of where fish are and I see it going on in the future. We’re always going to be getting a sense of where the fish are in all of our watersheds.

Pat Crain:

We just saw last week our first Elwha chinook above Glines canyon dam. it’s exciting that with the work you guys are doing we could see the first coho above the Cushman dams.

I think it’s something important to think about the compare and contrasts between the Elwha and Cushman projects and the monitoring efforts.

The Cushman is one of the best understood projects in the park. It has the most complete fisheries data in ONP, also the most visited area in the park, with bull trout as the most sensitive fish species. With Tacoma power’s help, we’re doing some habitat assessments which is not done often in pristine settings. We’ve got some information from a system that hasn’t been manipulated.

Our fish compositions studies are pretty simple in concept – divers get in river, side by side, drifting to look for adult fish but also note observations of juvenile fish. We can also use these surveys for adipose, floy tags any other visual markings of fish.

One observation is the timing of bull trout – moving in early. not sure what that’s from – water temperature or the way the reservoir is being managed. what does that mean to us? do we need to change our fishing regs? We just have a non-retention on bull trout – need to change that during high visitor periods?

Redd Surveys – early to say much but spawning starting in october 20 and new redds are seen through December. Very similar to coho. GPSing all the redds and surveying all the way to four steam. Saw one redd above staircase rapids in 2013.

Final work – habitat surveys using Timber/Fish/Wildlife protocols. Good methods but possibly not capture the full story. The other thing we did find – the Staircase Rapids area is a potential barrier depending on flow, jumping ability and time of year. Fish are really going to have to tell us if these are barriers or not.